Flagler sheriff's hunt for office space prompts property shuffle

Friday

Officials will seek to sell a county property near the Island Walk shopping center in Palm Coast and convert the recently purchased former Sear’s building into a Sheriff’s Office substation.

PALM COAST — Flagler County officials are planning to sell a county property near the Island Walk shopping center in Palm Coast and convert the recently purchased former Sear’s outlet into a Sheriff’s Office substation.

County commissioners this week agreed to a plan that will serve as one piece of the county's interim fix in the wake of the Sheriff’s Office Operations Center debacle in Bunnell.

Commissioners settled on a long-term solution April 15 when they unanimously approved building a new “district office” for the sheriff on 19 acres of county-owned land near the Flagler County Public Library’s main branch in Palm Coast. But that $15-million option is at least two years off.

[READ ALSO: Flagler votes to build sheriff's new HQ in Palm Coast]

In the meantime, 70 sheriff’s deputies once assigned to the operations center at 901 E. Moody Blvd. remain displaced and county officials are still figuring out how and where to station them while the Sheriff’s Office awaits a new command center.

Flagler Sheriff Rick Staly said during Monday's County Commission meeting that about 60 employees were relocated to the Kim C. Hammond Justice Center in Bunnell after mold fears compelled him to order the evacuation of the agency's headquarters in June. The other 10 were moved to the Sheriff’s Office jail administration building. The 35,000-square-foot operations center building has remained largely vacant since then.

Staly said the lack of space has grown beyond a simple hassle and is now starting to impact some Sheriff’s Office operations. He called the situation "critical."

“The problem is, I went from 35,000 square feet to roughly 6,000 square feet,” he told commissioners. “They are packed in like sardines. It has now come to the point where it is drastically hurting the operation and the work environment for those employees.”

County Administrator Jerry Cameron plans to do a little property shuffle to address the problem temporarily. The Sheriff’s Office contracts to provide law enforcement services to the city of Palm Coast and part of the agreement requires a district office within the city’s limits.

The Sheriff’s Office currently leases little more than 3,600-square-feet of office space at City Market Place from Cypress Point 160, a Palm Beach Gardens limited liability company, for $77,000 each year, records show. It's a lease former Sheriff Jim Manfre originally signed in 2013 and renewed in 2015. The property owner recently notified Staly that rent will soon be increased to $120,000 a year, according to Cameron.

So county officials now intend to move the Palm Coast precinct office into an 8,000-square-foot commercial property at 4888 Palm Coast Parkway NW that once housed a Sears outlet. The county entered into a contract to purchase that property in November. Staff members had negotiated a price of $1,125,000 but additional expenses increased the projected cost to between $1.3 million and $1.4 million.

[READ ALSO: Flagler officials eye financing options for building buy]

Cameron said Heidi Petito, Flagler’s General Services director, estimates it will cost about $40,000 to retrofit the former retail space into a Sheriff’s Office substation. It is unclear how long that will take.

Last May, county officials also bought a 43,000-square-foot building at the Island Walk shopping center. Officials intended to convert that building, which once served as a Wachovia bank branch, into a precinct office for the sheriff. Those plans fell through. Now county officials want to sell that property and also sell the former Sears building after the sheriff's district office near the library’s campus is constructed.

[READ ALSO: Flagler OKs new sheriff's office near Island Walk]

“That would be a considerable savings if we were to go ahead and do that and along with that, put the bank building on the market,” Cameron said. “By doing that, it should represent approximately $200,000-plus savings for the taxpayers. And the market value of the Sears building is only going to go up for the next couple of years.”

Despite all the maneuvering, Cameron has been unable to put out all the fires surrounding the demise of the operations center in Bunnell. When Sheriff’s Office employees moved into the Bunnell courthouse in June, it was with the understanding that it was a temporary situation and they would move out within 90 days.

That was nearly a year ago, and the agency has worn out its welcome with Circuit Court Clerk and Comptroller Tom Bexley, who oversees operations at the Bunnell courthouse. County and Sheriff’s Office officials have spent the past three months trying to nudge Bexley into allowing the sheriff to consolidate his operations on the first floor of the courthouse by moving 11 Clerk of Court staff members to other areas of the complex.

But Bexley has refused and Cameron on Monday said they’d reached an “impasse.” Commissioner David Sullivan noted the county owns the courthouse and suggested the board of commissioners order Bexley to make more space available for the Sheriff’s Office.

“It would seem to me, if push comes to shove, at some point we’d just direct the clerk that we need additional space in the building,” Sullivan said, “and accept whatever the bad side of that will be as far as how the clerk looks at the situation.”

Cameron seemed inclined to find a more diplomatic resolution but admitted he's low on resolutions.

“I’m hoping we can get this done without having to use those measures, but I am running out of options,” he said.

In closing, Staly told commissioners that consolidating his operations at the courthouse would be the best and cheapest solution. But he said his staff also has had little success in their negotiations with Bexley.

“But now it’s either time to bring it to a head or we need to lease the sheriff additional space,” Staly said.

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